NATIONAL ASSOCIATION CHARITY NO. 292377 OF FLOWER ARRANGEMENT

SOCIETIES www.SussexAreaNAFAS.org.uk www.facebook.com/SussexAreaNAFAS

Week 14 – Don’t Risk it for a Biscuit!

Dear Members,

Here at Newsletter central, our thanks go out to all our contributors who are helping us with a new mini

series starting today: much-loved NAFAS Periods and Accessories, as well as favourite NAFAS Styles

or Techniques. These will be featured over the coming weeks. Then we have our regular peek into a

member’s garden. Thank you one and all.

If you feel these newsletters are too frequent, you can always withdraw from your Club’s mailing list

and catch up, in your own time, on our website or FaceBook page instead. If you’re not on the internet,

perhaps your Club could post the newsletters to you on a monthly basis.

Know your onions! Have you got alliums in your garden? Could we have them for Flower Power 2021

please? If you pick the alliums just as they are going brown, the stem will stay attached. Gorgeous

Gaenor is happy to collect and store them. Contact her on 01798 812719 or gaenor.circus@virgin.net

She could pick up your donations for the tombola at the same time!

As dear Vera Lynn would have said: we’ll meet again.

Jilly

Generous Gardeners in Lesley Etherton’s Garden, Horsham

One of my favourite roses is The Generous Gardener, a pale pink, fragrant, English climbing rose purchased with David Austin vouchers given to me for a special birthday. It was partly the name that attracted me. Gardeners are the most generous people, always keen to share cuttings, seedlings and spare plants. As I look round my garden this morning, the star of the show is a Zantedeschia right which originally came from my brother-in-law’s family home near Glasgow.

There is a rose left which I call Muriel after my mother who grew several of them from cuttings from the roses in my sister-in-law’s wedding bouquet. Earlier in the year there were lily of the valley from Great Auntie Elsie’s garden in Salisbury as well as some special pink ones, a gift from my Auntie Sylvia, and primroses and violets from a friend in Cornwall.

I also have an Avocado tree grown from a stone by my grandson who is now 18 right and Chinese Lanterns from seed taken from those used in my mother’s funeral flowers. Another favourite is Hydrangea Villosa which I bought many years ago at Great Dixter. The wonderful Fergus Garrett was serving in the shop! And then there are all those plants purchased from the sales table at Council meetings – Hostas, Euphorbia Wulfenii, Libertia, Physocarpus – the list could go on. All bring back so many memories of those generous gardeners in my life.

Many thanks to our hard-working, super-efficient, Area Secretary, Lesley. How marvellous to have wonderful mementos of special times and people.

Marriage

Not only do our clubs have fantastic anniversary celebrations but so do you members. I

thoroughly enjoy hearing about your ruby, emerald, golden and the occasional diamond

anniversary. But you know what we’re like, if we put this hallowed institution on a pedestal,

we have to take pot shots at it. So here goes:

Anybody have an

owners’ manual for a

husband?

Mine’s making a

whining sound.

It’s been such a joy being home with the wife for the past three months. We’ve caught up on all the things

I’ve done wrong in the past 35 years.

From a woman’s point of view:

1. Don't imagine you can change a man -

unless he's in nappies.

2. What do you do if your boyfriend walks

out? You shut the door.

3. If they put a man on the moon - they

should be able to put them all up there.

4. Go for the younger man. You might as

well, they never mature anyway.

5. Men are all the same - they just have

different faces, so we can tell them apart.

6. Best way to get a man to do something is

to suggest he is too old for it.

7. Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye-

opener.

8. The children of Israel wandered around

the desert for 40 years. Even in Biblical

times, men wouldn't ask for directions.

9. If he asks what sort of books you're

interested in, tell him cheque books.

10.. Remember a sense of humour does not

mean that you tell him jokes, it means that

you laugh at his.

An elderly couple are lying in bed one

evening. Turning to her husband, the wife asks:

'Do you remember when we first started dating

and you used to hold my hand?' Her husband

leans over unenthusiastically and takes hold of

her hand before trying to get back to sleep.

A few moments later she says: 'Do you remember

our first kiss?' Mildly irritated, her husband

reaches across, gives his wife a quick peck on the

cheek and settles down to sleep.

Thirty seconds later his wife pipes up 'Then you

used to bite my neck'. Angrily, her husband

throws back the duvet, clambers out of bed and

storms out of the room.

'Where are you going?' She calls out after him.

'To get my teeth'!

At a cocktail party, one woman said to another,

'Aren't you wearing your

wedding ring on the wrong

finger?' 'Yes, I am. I married the wrong

man.'

A lady inserted an ad in the classifieds:

'Husband Wanted'.

Next day she received a

hundred letters. They all said the same thing:

'You can have mine.'

A little boy asked his father,

'Daddy, how much does it cost

to get married?'

Father replied, 'I don't know

son, I'm still paying.'

When a woman steals your

husband, there is no better

revenge than to let her keep

him.

First guy says, 'My wife's an

angel!'

Second guy remarks, 'You're

lucky, mine's still alive.'

Then there was a woman who

said, 'I never knew what real

happiness was

until I got married, and by

then, it was too late.'

Marriage is the triumph of

imagination over intelligence.

If you want your spouse to

listen and pay strict attention

to every word you say -- talk

in your sleep.

Just think, if it weren't for

marriage, men would go

through life thinking they had

no faults at all.

A young son asked,

'Is it true Dad, that in some parts of Africa a man doesn't

know his wife until he marries

her?'

Dad replied, 'That happens in

every country, son.'

Taken from Nonsense Rhymes

- 1902

There was once an old man of Lyme

Who married three wives at a

time,

When asked 'Why a third?'

He replied, 'One's absurd!' And bigamy, Sir, is a crime!'

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord

Russell, was once asked by a lady what was the maximum

punishment for bigamy 'Two

mothers-in-law' he responded

Grow Your Own

Did you know that you can get free veg from your supermarket purchases? I’ve been

experimenting. I placed the root stump of a Little Gem lettuce in water, bottom left, and, lo and

behold, new leaves started to grow. Ok – not enough for a salad yet but they’ll top up a

sandwich nicely. You can do the same with spring onion, bottom right, and apparently with lemon

grass too. Who knew?

Dearest Dad,

I am coming home to get married soon, so get your cheque book out. I'm in love with a boy who is far away from me. As you know, I am in Australia ... and he lives in Scotland. We met on a dating website, became friends on Facebook , had long chats on WhatsApp. He proposed to me on Skype, and now we've had two months of a relationship through Viber. My beloved and favourite Dad, I need your blessing, good wishes, and a really big wedding.

Lots of love and thanks. Your favourite daughter,

Lilly, xx

My Dear Lilly,

Like Wow! Really? Cool!

Whatever ... I suggest you two get married on Twitter, have fun on Tango, buy your kids on Amazon, and pay for it all through PayPal.

And when you get fed up with this new husband, sell him on eBay.

Love, Dad

Period Work We’re starting a new mini-series with contributions from our wonderful judges and teachers

on period work. This week, it’s a quick look at Art Deco (1920s & 1930s), which is Ann

Kennedy’s favourite.

Ann particularly likes the simplicity of the

period which lends itself to contemporary

work.

She loves wonderful plant material for

sculptural shapes, especially hats.

But, and there’s always a but, be careful of

using shiny objects as containers or

accessories: they can dominate an exhibit.

If you didn’t make it to the NAFAS

Nationals 2019 in Islington, here is Ann’s

cubicle left in the Designer of the Year

competition.

The geometry of Art Deco with its

rectangular lines and glossy surfaces

influenced the design of buildings,

furniture, interior design and accessories.

Egypt mania swept the nation after the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1925.

There’s a shop in Forest Row specialising in Art Deco furniture and accessories

https://jeroenmarkies.co.uk. You’ll get a good feel for the period looking at the website.

If you’re out and about take a look at the De La Warr Pavilion on the seafront at Bexhill-on-

Sea, Shoreham Airport Terminal Building, Saltdean Lido, Worthing Pier, Onslow Court and

Stock Abbott Court, both apartment blocks in Worthing, and Brighton’s Savoy Cinema to

name just a few of the stylish buildings from this period in Sussex.